Welcome to the Roman Baths Blog!

Tuesday, 10 November 2015

As part of our Heritage Open Week event at our St John’s local
history store this year we had a trail looking at our pest management procedures, – not
as dire as it sounds!

We positioned large dangling plastic spiders as clues to the
location of pictures of pests and their food stuffs. Children had to connect
the pest with what it eats and how we stop them from damaging our collection.

So for instance, one spider sat above our bath chair, and on
its fabric lined seat was a picture of a clothes moth and a moth trap was
placed nearby. This fiendish device
contains pheromones which attract then trap male moths so they can’t go and
find females to mate with…

Insect traps are in the forefront of our battle against the
creepy crawlies: silverfish eat paper so visitor books, letters and posters are
at risk, but as a non-flier it is easier to control. However, the
inappropriately named woodworm, actually a beetle, are the greatest threat in
St John’s with 39 pieces of furniture stored there. Again insect traps near windows
and doors help. Regular visual checks
ensure none get their teeth into the wood.
If furniture is infested, treating with a special insecticide and then
keeping them isolated from the rest of the store, ensures no beetle escapes.

The handy English Heritage guide to Museum pests

The number of nasty nibblers who love wool, carpets, and
other fabrics are many. But they were
represented in our quiz by the carpet beetle, again caught by insect traps and
vigilant checking.

Rodents are always a concern in old buildings and St John’s is
in an 1875 school, but, mercifully, all holes are blocked and we do not
suffer. But traps and poison are used in the other
buildings where we also store collections.

Children seemed to be unfazed by the prospect of killing
pests and were very matter of fact about the demise of mice at home.

Good housekeeping: regular checks and cleaning are important
and when not open, we use Tyvek covers to protect the collection. And at the
event we displayed these and some of the tools we use: from soft brushes,
cotton buds, a hoover as well as protection for us, the cleaners: dust masks
and vitrile gloves.

Verity covering up the furniture in St John's after our event with Tyvek covers

The final question on the trail was whether spiders and
humans were pests or friends. Our young
visitors quickly grasped the idea that although spiders catch flies, their webs
make cleaning difficult and the sticky fingers and messy habits of humans are
sometimes worse than the smaller pests!

The Roman Baths at Night

The Roman Baths Bloggers

We are the volunteers, interns and employees of the Roman Baths. We started this blog to provide you with a behind the scenes glimpse of what goes on here at the Roman Baths. We will be writing about what is interesting and important to us from collections to activities and events.